


tender memories

by Astoria



Series: age of innocence [3]
Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 17:18:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8410051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astoria/pseuds/Astoria
Summary: 1880s, La Belle Epoque, Paris
Therese and Carol are in Paris and rub shoulders with artists and the French bohemian essence. 
It is all going well until Carol disappears one day.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You should probably read the other works in the series to understand!

The mansion was far away from where Therese and Carol temporarily lived and they had to take a carriage to go there. The movements of the horses and the jolts it provoked on the whole car and the girls themselves could not distract them from the anxiety they felt at their adventure; if anything it was even worse on the girls' poor stomachs. Carol held on Therese's hand and would often leave a kiss on her hairline to remind her they were together and safe. They looked at Paris by night, the streets never really empty and the moon benevolent on the night walkers.

 

They could not tell directly their chauffeur where they wanted to go so they asked him to stop a few meters from their actual destination. Then they walked close to each other without touching, except in their looks, they threw longing looks and smiles. Then they were in front of it, the mansion.  _The_ mansion. It was a bit surprising as it was not at all in the French style and certainly not in the Haussmannian style which so characterized Paris, but in the English style. It looked rather austere to the unaccustomed eye but in the end it was something familiar that Therese and Carol could attach themselves to.

 

“Shall we?” Therese started her sentence but had no idea how to finish it so she expected Carol to take over.

 

And Carol did, smiling; she knocked on the imposing wooden door, her gloves making little squeaking noises. “We shall.”

 

It felt surreal and it became even more so when a gap in the door slid open and two eyes full of make-up appraised them. Therese wanted to say something, maybe introduce them, but she was too scared to do so and remained silent. As did Carol, but she looked directly in the eyes. God! Therese was already so nervous and it did not help that the woman behind the door was wearing artifice like a prostitute, well Therese hated to judge especially on appearances, but she didn't think she had ever seen so much make up on a refined lady of the society. She was not a prude! She was  _not_ . Perhaps a little. She hid half of her face in Carol's shoulder, looking from the corner of her eyes the door. That triggered the woman and she saw her smile with crooked teeth and suddenly the door was wide open.

 

They heard music instantly, and then came the loud laughs. They looked at each other, again as always, for any situation, for anything they felt whether it be joy, uncertainty, fear, playfulness, whether they were far away from each other, whether the room was full of other people, whether anything at all they found each other in that one reassuring glance. It was a bit heady to think they were doubles. No, really, one should talk about soul mates. They smiled and did not hesitate to hold each other's hands, for this was the place for it, wasn't it?

 

The walls were draped in a deep red tapestry and with the low lighting of very few candles on tables, Therese had the distinct impression they were walking in a  _bordel_ : a brothel, but one of very good taste she had to admit. Still a brothel though. They sat down gingerly at one of the tables.

 

There was a wooden stage and so many girls on it. They were dancing, Therese saw so many legs up in the air she might have thought her eyes were seeing double. She was looking, fascinated, at them when she realized their undergarments, their culottes, had big holes in them. Therese gaped and turned to Carol looking scandalised, only to find Carol smiling with mirth. Maybe she was a prude after all. Still she could not stop herself from looking at all the exposed skin, these longs legs and…  _there_ . 

 

She was blushing so hard she asked one of the waiters for a glass of champagne. That was when she realized the waiters were women dressed like men with monocles and trousers. She could not help but laugh and laugh, her throat exposed to the ceiling. The sound was swallowed up immediately by the music and the conversations, but not to Carol. She came closer, almost out of her seat to depose a kiss behind Therese’s ear. All the laughter left her body in an instant. Holding hands had been fine, a sisterly embrace that did not bother anyone. But a sensual kiss, one that lovers shared in their most intimate moments… Therese scraped her chair on the floor when she recoiled violently.

 

“Don’t.” She begged. Her eyes would not leave Carol’s face, fearing to look at the other patrons.

 

“Darling.” Carol’s calm voice soothed her and she closed her eyes to protect herself from the cruel world. “I did not wish to make you uncomfortable, forgive me.”

 

At that Therese opened her eyes quickly. “You will never make me uncomfortable and especially not when you show me your affections.”

 

“Good.” Carol’s soft hand caught a tendril of Therese’s hair, before touching her cheek. “Look around.” She did and now it all made sense: the women wearing trousers, the absence of men, and the girls dancing together… They were safe in that little bubble of a world. She had trouble reconciling it with the real world, but for tonight it would have to do just fine.

 

Therese grabbed Carol’s hand that was still on her cheek and kissed her palm. She kept going, peppering kisses on the inside of her wrist, up until her elbow. Then she was close enough to Carol’s face and kept going, kissing her chin, her cheeks and finally her red cherry mouth without thinking about anything else but the taste of Carol that she so dearly wanted to savour without wasting another moment. Kissing indecently like the French,  _among_ the French, in public was such an exhilarating feeling that Therese laughed again, but this time the sound was inhaled by Carol’s hungry and ready mouth. It was good, it felt perfect.

 

When she opened her eyes again, she looked at Carol first, obviously, instinctively, but then she looked around because it had invigorated her and she felt at ease in her, no  _their_ , little bubble. No one was looking at them or at least no one was staring in horror at them, hurling insults and reciting verses. No, the women there were minding their own businesses, some of them even kissing like Carol and Therese. There was an unaltered and unhidden joy that shook Therese down to her core. She did not think she would ever be the same afterwards. She even feared to become greedy and want to do it every day of their lives. She got a taste of freedom, she wanted more.

 

But she also knew that was not the real world, so she enjoyed the present moment and drowned in Carol’s blue, blue eyes.

 

 

Les Buttes Chaumont had become their home. It was the cheap, unwanted place where all the artists came to live with same minded people. They had become bohemians and Therese had to laugh, thinking back to their cold English education, the hard rulers on her fingers and the mandatory prayers every day.

 

They were always together, never tiring of one another. They often went to sleep in the early hours of the morning only to wake up in the afternoon when they would make love for hours. Then when their stomachs got too noisy, they would meet some friends in a restaurant and remain there or at another place with good company. Carol would always get into heated debates about poetry and literature. Therese loved to watch her, colour high on her cheeks, standing up and moving her arms in all direction, passionately speaking about some poet or other. The worst part about their journey was that Carol had had to learn French to be able to communicate but most of all to be able to read the French poets. Her accent was very British in all circumstances and Therese loved her overdone harsh ‘r’ and her soft vowels. If she did not have the upper hand in a debate Carol would revert back to English with barely hidden insults.

 

Therese talked too; she just did not put herself in the middle of the room. She was always more discreet and she usually found herself listening to whatever Carol was talking about, while looking at the painters. She had found herself if she could express herself in that fashion through painting. Therese had always been a very studious girl, listening to her teacher and doing her homework months in advance. She supposed she was looking for some kind of approval from anyone who was an adult and might have substituted her dead parents. She hadn’t loved studying but she had loved the teacher’s smile or Carol’s overt admiration. Now though she did not have to keep up any pretence. She let her hands talk, her mind wandering away.

 

“If you haven’t read Byron you haven’t read anything at all!” was Carol’s leitmotiv, the sentence she would say so often her adversary would scoff and rant about those British who thought the world was their playground. Therese snickered and remembered the book she had offered Carol, the book she still had, the book she read every day before sleeping and after making love to Therese. Because of all that and the memories associated with their time in the meadow near the lake every time she heard the name of Byron, Therese would flush all over, nearly whimpering under the vivid memories and push her paintbrush harder on her poor canvas.

 

The day was banal, well, as banal as it could be with them. But it was normal, they had done everything they wanted like always, idling away the hours together. Then everything had changed. Therese had had a painting class and Carol was too tired to get out of bed so she simply smiled and kissed the corner of her lips. “You lazy girl.” Therese muttered fondly, her hand stroking gently her arm still warm from sleep. “I will see your beautiful face in an hour.” But now, Therese had been back for a few hours and Carol was not there anymore. Her clothes were on the floor, their scarce furniture askew, and the only earthly possessions they had: all over the place.

 

Therese had panicked and wanted to contact the gendarmerie but she felt absolutely helpless in every way. She knocked like a madwoman on the neighbours’ doors and asked if they knew anything at all,  _please, please,_ and she finally gathered from the already or still drunk people, the artists full of opium, the low lives full of opium, the whores, and all the nice people inhabiting their neighbourhood, that English speaking people had come and took her. She protested but they overpowered her. 

 

Therese could have told at the exact moment her heart broke into pieces when she realized she would never see Carol again.

 

*

The train ride that followed the boat was painful. It was dull and crowded and Therese threw up several times. It was painful and at the same time she felt numb all over. She felt exactly like last time when Carol and her were separated. She felt like she had had her second chance with her and now reality was coming back like a harsh slap in the face. She looked out the window and saw the inescapable and unmistakable English landscape. Green and empty and wet. Those very landscapes numerous English painters drew in pride: Therese wanted to slash those canvas, she wanted to see the green bleed out. She just wanted to go back to Paris, to the 19 th arrondissement where there were bricks and cobbles and more people than trees. The lords in England favoured the countryside rather than the big dirty towns. London was a horrible sight for Therese and Carol when they travelled in Europe. It was not unlike Paris, but, in the end, even if they were English through and through, Paris had liked them and they had like Paris. And also London had still been too close to their old life, their life before. France, Paris was a renewal, a fountain of youth moment. 

 

Now, though, now she had arrived at the estate. Carol didn’t talk often about her family and for good reason. She was an only daughter and her father’s bitterness about his wife’s inability to produce a male heir bled through his relationship with Carol. They were rich and Carol had to marry rich to perpetrate the legacy, like a product, a cow offered to the highest buyer they laughed about when they talked about it.

 

Therese hadn’t slept in a week, or barely at least. Her eyes were red, she had seen her reflection in the train’s window. Her hair and dress were acceptable considering she hadn’t been able to change any of that in several days. The house was precisely like Therese imagined it: big, impersonal, a perfectly tended to garden and a genial lack of natural. For a moment she hesitated. She had barrelled on without even stopping. The day Carol disappeared she bought tickets to come back to England with the last pennies they had managed to scrape together. She thought of coming to her house because that was the only place she could be at now. But now she hesitated: what would she even say? Would they even open the door? But by God she was exhausted and she hadn’t thought of an alternative plan, other than  _I need to find my Carol_ . 

 

She knocked on the door and schooled her face to hide her fatigue and her desperation.

 

“Good Morning Miss, what can I do for you?” A plump Irish woman answered and Therese smiled amicably.

 

“Good Morning.” She said and stalled. What was going to help her in that situation? “I am here for… hum… Miss Carol?” She ended up saying awkwardly and already sweating through the anxiety.

 

The maid regarded her for a moment. She looked at Therese’s bag. “Well of course you are the painter! You weren’t supposed to arrive for weeks.” And indeed a few of Therese’s longer paintbrushes were going past her bag, which also angered the many passengers from the boat and the train who had to walk near that bag that very well might have stabbed them, had they not looked.

 

“Yes! Exactly! I decided to come earlier, if it isn’t too bothersome for the family?”

 

“To say the truth you aren’t coming at a great time but I suppose they cannot tell you to leave.”

 

“Why is it not a good moment?”

 

“Because of the marriage of course!”

 

“The marriage?” Therese blanched and had to put her heavy bag down as to not faint right here and there. “You mean…” She could not finish her sentence, she just could not.

 

“The mistress of the house, Miss Carol- Oh no I should say Mrs. Harge Aird now.” She was smiling, showing all her teeth. “Oh! If you could have seen her in her beautiful dress today! And he is a good party too, very rich! And her parents-” She could not listen anymore, she felt hot all over and cold at the same time. She cut off the maid and with a trembling voice asked if the marriage was today and where. She left her bag in the house and the maid, Moira, tried to show her her room in the house but she could not see anything at all. She nearly ran out of the house and only fell three times.

 

The chapel was not far away, but still, the bottom of Therese’s dress was absolutely soaked in mud. She didn’t ware and opened the chapel’s doors with a big bang. She felt head turn to look at her but she couldn’t help looking ahead where Carol was gleaming in a pale pink dress. She was a vision, the light touching her just right, the frame of the chapel making her holy, her eyes shining the same blue as the one of the stained glasses.

 

She remained there, standing in the aisle, looking at them both for a while the ushers and whispers of everyone surrounded her. She needed time, she was seeing Carol again but she was marrying someone else. She needed time so she sat down in one the pews without thinking at all. They recited their vows. They kissed. People cheered. Carol did not look once in Therese’s direction. That hurt even more than the wedding in itself, and the knife that had been snugly planted in her stomach since that day in Paris moved and turned every time Carol looked at her husband and not at Therese.

 

They had promised each other. Carol had kissed her ring finger and since that day Therese and Carol had been the only one the see the ring, but it had been there, it was still there. Now though, Carol had a real one, a big, heavy one that weighted her whole hand. So that was reality. Therese was not invited in that part of her life and she felt like pushing the knife deeper.

 

She looked at her pink dress and thought about that silly rhyme song:

_Married in white, you have chosen all right,_

_Married in grey, you’ll go far away,_

_Married in black, you will wish yourself back,_

_Married in red, you’d better be dead,_

_Married in greed, ashamed to be seen,_

_Married in blue, you’ll always be true,_

_Married in pearl, you’ll live in a whirl,_

_Married in yellow, ashamed of the fellow,_

_Married in brown, you’ll live out of town,_

_Married in pink, your spirits will sink._

 

Yes, pink seemed appropriate.

 

 

 

*

 

Therese moved in the house under the euphoria of a wedding that was a good match that pushed Carol’s parents to not be as careful as they might have been to hire Therese to paint the portraits of the family.

 

Carol had not spoken to her once.

 

Not even looked at her.

 

It kept going for a whole month before she finally had to paint her.

 

*

 

She was simply resplendent. Her golden locks were tied carefully in an elaborate bun that Carol from before would have never had the patience for. She always liked to wear her hair down and flowing and free against the fashion of the time. Therese supposed that Carol wanted to change many things in her life, starting with her hair.

 

She closed the door to her room with shaking hands and turned around. Carol was looking at her room, her hands behind her back.

 

“There are so many rooms in that home. I do not even think I ever went here. Isn’t that funny? I’ve lived here my entire life but I haven’t explored all of it.”

 

“I suppose.” She answered, nauseous and confused and lost and so in love. “Do you- Hum.” She stopped and sat in a chair. That was so difficult, and she felt stupid and she was married now. Married! “Do you love Harge?” She blurted without thinking, she did not even want to hear the answer, the cursed answer!

Carol gaped in shock and then frowned with a barely hidden fury. “How dare you?”

 

“What? Surely you are mocking me Carol!”

 

“Mrs. Aird!”

 

“What?” Therese asked in a small voice.

 

“You will call me Mrs. Aird. I will not tolerate that kind of familiarity.” Carol said icily. Therese could almost feel the coldness between them, growing and engulfing her heart.

 

“I apologise Mrs. Aird.”

 

“Good. Now let us begin, I have other things to do with my time.”

 

Did she think it was a knife? Oh no, no. An axe was a more apt image.

 

She was so close and yet so far. Therese thought about returning to France. In Paris she had friends and stitched family of sorts. She could live there. Drink her English tea in the morning while reading French poetry, then go to her painting classes and then when the sun sets she could go to one of those mansions and make a girl who dances there her lover. It would be easy to live like this too, wouldn’t it? She would live as she wants, doing what she wants. Would that be enough?

 

She cannot even pretend to entertain the idea because her whole being knows the truth.

 

For how could she live without Carol when her heart only beat for her?

 

*

Painting a portrait took hours, and for hours Carol sat in that chair looking away from Therese, her mouth set in a rigid line. Therese sometimes forgot to paint to look at her.

 

She won’t talk to her.

*

She saw Carol and her husband walking in the garden arm in arm.

 

Therese did not sleep that night, she imagined them together and the nightmares would not stop.

 

*

They finally exchanged a few words. They laughed about Moira’s clumsiness. They even gossiped a bit about the village. Therese did not care about the subject, she just wanted Carol’s attention on her. Her smile directed at her. Therese smiled for the first time in weeks. Little victories and that.

 

*

Therese offered a cigarette to Carol during one of their breaks. She refused at first, stating that a lady was not supposed to smoke, and Therese wanted to cry because Carol was not a respectable lady, she was a rebel, a fire, an intellectual.

 

Later that day, she saw Carol smoking far away in the garden. She made a ‘shush’ motion to Therese and winked. Therese fell asleep with a smile that night.

 

*

They had grown close again against all odds. Therese still called her Mrs. Aird and Carol still called her Miss Belivet (she always pretended it did not make her flinch) but they talked everyday now. Carol did not have any other friend, Therese saw, and they had grown close again. Not as close as before, but at this point Therese would have taken anything from her. The hardest part still about it all was the complete lack of acknowledgement of the past. Therese did not know how it was possible for Carol to just forget everything they had lived. But it seemed she had forgotten everything with her innocent eyes.

 

Carol would have never been cruel intentionally and especially not toward Therese. But it seemed she didn’t love her anymore and Therese was acting like a child who refused to be separated from her mother’s teat. She had acted rashly coming here without thinking, and more than that, remaining here to paint those portraits, making Carol live every day a torture. Therese was absolutely convinced Carol did not love her anymore.

 

One day Carol came into the room with a book in her hand and Therese’s joy could not be hidden. Carol loved books and poetry and that was the Carol she knew. “What are you reading?”

 

She raised the book. “That? A present from my husband. I so love to read.” Therese read the title  _M_ _arriage and the Duties of the Marriage Relations_ , by G. W. Quinby. She did a double take and her brows knitted. 

 

“A… conduct book?”

 

“Why of course, every woman should read it. Especially one who just married.” Carol answered with a small smile.

 

Therese shook herself. “You love reading? I have a present for you.” Therese’s hands were shaking when she grabbed the book that was always under her pillow. “Here.”

 

“Thank you, Miss Belivet. You are full of attentions.” Her eyes were twinkling mischievously and Therese could almost believe that was her Carol. She took the book and looked at the cover for a moment. “Byron?”

“You will love it.”

 

“I trust you.” She stroked the book with her long white fingers. “That book was read a lot wasn’t it?”

 

“Oh yes. It was loved thoroughly.” She breathed, hypnotized by the movements of her fingers. Carol looked up at her and her eyes had a special look in them that Therese could not decipher the meaning of.

 

“I always say that.”

 

“Do you?” She asked dumbly. Of course she knew that. She knew everything about Carol and Carol didn’t seem to know herself.

 

When the moment passed, Therese started painting. She saw that it was almost over and she wanted to destroy it like Penelope had done to her weaving. If she finished the portrait she would not see Carol anymore. She stalled, she changed paints and paintbrushes more than needed.

*

A few days afterward, Carol knocked on Therese’s room in the middle of the night. “I am so sorry Miss Belivet. I just could not sleep because of the book you gave me. Byron! Would you mind if I came into your room to talk about it?”

 

Of course, Therese did not mind.

 

*

 

“Would you mind terribly?” Carol said suddenly one day during one of their painting session, gesturing toward her head. “One of the pins is prickling me and it is intolerable.”

 

“Of course, Mrs. Aird.”

 

“Call me Carol.”

 

Therese stumbled and nearly dropped on her face. “Only if you call me Therese.” She eventually said, trying to keep her calm.

 

She reached Carol and looked for the guilty pin. As she could not see much she started touching to get them all out. Her hair was still soft and she was close enough to smell that familiar scent. That was painful, the silky strands gliding through her fingers. Hair that she had caressed, tugged on, kissed. She removed all the pins, one by one. The hair fell on her shoulders and Therese understood immediately why Carol put up her hair now. In the middle of her skull, her hair was shaved and a big scar nearly crossed her whole head. She must have done something because Carol chuckled.

 

“I know, terrible isn’t it?”

 

“What happened?” _What happened my love?_ She wanted to scream and kiss her and kill the people who had done this to her.

“An accident. I fell off my horse.” She stated factually. But Therese knew Carol did not ride except if it was absolutely necessary.

 

“Did you really?”

 

“Well… yes.”

 

“You hesitated. One usually knows about things like that.”

 

“I forgot quite a lot of things after my accident.”

 

It all made sense, Therese’s legs seemed to be made out of cotton and her lungs were finally opening after months of lead in her respiratory system. “You suffer from memory loss?”

 

“Please do not go off gossiping about me in the village, please.”

 

She shook her head vehemently. “I would never.”

 

“I know.” She answered quickly and seemed to be surprised at that.

 

“It’s just… I have never seen a horse injury like yours.” Therese insisted. Something was bothering her. “Can I look closer?”

 

“Go ahead.”

 

She touched Carol’s skull around the car, careful not to hurt her. She stretched the skin and unmistakably saw a mark at the very middle that was like a syringe mark.

 

“Oh Carol.” Her tears fell down without her own accord. They just fell and she fell to her knees and Carol hugged her and it had been months so she cried harder. Why was life so difficult for them? Why did everyone hate them?

 

“Therese! Therese, why are you in such a state my dear?” Carol’s soft hands were wiping away her tears and Therese could have died there so she surged forward and captured Carol’s lips with her own. She expected resistance or outrage but she only got a kiss in return. It was like the first time, their lips sticking together in a dance of sensuality and tenderness. Her lips were so plump and Therese cried harder, mixing her tears with Carol’s. Coming out for air, they stopped kissing.

 

“Carol.” She said simply, her voice breaking.

 

“Therese?” Carol was shaking all over and her lips were red.

 

“They took you to that damned hospital didn’t they?” Therese cried out. “They rummaged through your brilliant brain didn’t they? They said they would, God, they said they would and they did.” She wailed uselessly.

 

Carol stood up and sat down heavily on Therese’s bed. “I don’t…” She touched the scar behind her head. Then she touched gently her lips. “I don’t know anything.”

 

“Look at me. Do you remember Paris?”

 

“I…”

 

“The lake? Ashford?” She sat down beside her. “What about me? Do you remember me?”

 

“I did not.” Therese’s heart clenched. “But then I dreamt of you so often, of your body and your lips and your eyes and our conversations. At the lake, at school, at the library. You have moles on your hip that look like Orion. You love drinking tea without any milk. You are the best person I’ve ever met and ever loved.”

 

Therese embraced Carol’s shaking form. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

 

“I… don’t know.” She started crying in earnest. “What have they done to me, Therese? I don’t… I don’t know! I just wanted to kiss you but a part of me was in pain at the thought so I read books about marriages and etiquette and I never looked at you and I spent time with my husband.”

 

“Are you in pain now?” To test that, Therese leaned toward Carol and kissed her softly. Her tongue peeking out when Carol sighed faintly. She traced her pulpy lips with the tip of her tongue, drinking in the soft moans and other whimpers.

 

“No, not at all.” Carol murmured, staring at Therese’s lips. “If anything I’ve never felt happier.”

 

“We’ll make them pay.”

 

*

“Are you quite dead, my lover?” Therese stretched like a cat on the big bed. She was absolutely naked and the light breeze from the open window made her shiver.

 

“Quite so, my darling.” Carol answered while taking off her light blue embroidered dress and all the garments under it. “Suicide it looks like. I suppose Heaven is not for me.”

 

“Do not jest about that.” Therese answered severely. She still didn’t like Carol’s nonchalance with religion. “Do you have everything?”

 

Carol was now completely naked too. She looked at Therese with a smile before grabbing her bag and moving it around. The clinks of the coins made Therese laugh, Carol joined her. “I can now proudly say my parents and Harge fucking Aird have respectively a dead daughter and a dead wife and also no more money.”

 

“That feels very good. Do you think Sister Alice would be angry with us for that?”

 

“Sister Alice?”

 

“Sister Alice from Ashford.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been, in your many years at Ashford, to the Church?”

 

“I’m not telling you then.” She answered grinning widely while Therese was shaking her head in exasperation. “And anyway, yes, Therese, of course she would be angry. We slammed about all the sins available. Revenge, money and deviant tendencies. People of the Church tend to not like that.”

 

“Well then if we are doomed, come here and ravage me.” Therese said while biting her lips, and it made Carol lose her smile and nearly fall forward.

 

“Therese!” She looked scandalized. “You rebel!”

 

“I have become a true Parisian. The art of seduction is not a mystery to me anymore.”

 

“You never needed it anyway. You had me all along with you all alone.” She finally walked to the bed and lay on Therese. For a moment neither of them moved and they simply looked into each other’s face, skin on skin contact everywhere grounding them in reality. Carol still had that scar but her hair had grown, hiding it from everyone. She let her hair free and long. She still did not remember everything, huge chunks of her life gone forever, but she remembered little by little. And she had remembered the most important, well, according to Therese. She had remembered them and that was the most important now.

 

Therese slid her hand down Carol’s back, a hesitant movement of discovering someone again. They had not done anything more than kisses and she was not certain how to go about it anymore. “Is it… How long has it been for you?” She asked even though she did not want to hear the answer.

 

“How long has what been?” Carol’s brow was furrowed. “Oh, intercourse.” Now her eyebrows wiggled playfully.

 

Therese blushed hard and tried to shift to hide her face in the pillow, but Carol’s weight on her prevented her from moving. “Yes.”

“Paris. Yes, since Paris. With you of course.”

 

“But… But you’re married!”

 

“First of all, no. Carol Aird is a married woman, but Carol Aird is also a dead woman. I am not Carol Aird. Then do you think I would have done anything at all with Harge? That buffoon! No, he hoped until the last moment to plunge inside of me. Fuck him!”

 

“How?” Therese could only ask while laughing, her laughter reverberating inside of Carol.

 

“My accident of course. I was too weak to do anything of the sort; at least this is what I told them. I just did not want his big, fat hands on me.” Carol shuddered and Therese felt the same.

 

“That’ll serve him and your family for doing that horrible thing to you.”

 

“I am not convinced it is equally horrible, but that’ll do.” Carol kissed above Therese’s eyebrows.

 

“Do you think they’re very sad now?” She dared ask guiltily.

 

Carol scoffed. “They are mourning the match they had made and the money they lost. Do not feel bad for what we’ve done-”

 

“I don’t.” She cut off.

 

“Good. Because they do not feel bad about what they’ve done to me. And I have the feeling they know I’m not really dead. I escaped them once, they know how I am.”

 

They talked a bit more trying to anchor themselves in the moment, but other matters became too pressing for them to ignore. Carol was lying down snugly on Therese, their entire bodies touching everywhere. When one of them moved a bit or spoke, the other felt it intimately as if they were sharing one body. Therese wanted them to melt together so they would never be separated again.

 

“I love you with all my heart.” Therese whispered in Carol’s warm neck.

 

Carol said the words back and started moving slowly upon her, rolling shallowly on her. That was enough to start a fire. Therese started moving too, lifting up her hips in an effort to meet Carol’s movement more amply. Then her whole body was moving too, going up and up and up while Carol was rolling like a snake on her, her whole body moving in synch.

 

Their moans filled the big room as much as the slap of skin on skin provoked by their movements but also because Therese’s breasts had grown in the last months. She was a woman now and even if her breasts were not as full as Carol’s, they were enough. Now they were moving up and down and Carol latched onto one of her nipples. She bit down gently and Therese cried out in surprise and in arousal. That only made her renew her movements. They were rubbing against one another, Therese’s thigh between Carol’s legs. She moved her leg precisely touching what she wanted to reach. Therese could feel wetness sliding down on her thigh and the mere idea of Carol dripping like that because of Therese only encouraged her to move more.

 

She kissed every part of Carol she could find, her soft warm skin alighting her in so many ways. Carol was still focused on her breasts. “I don’t remember them like that.” She said between wanton moans. “I love them. You feel so good.” And then they were back at it, Carol suckling on one of them while pinching the other, her hands touching them and rolling them.

 

Therese grabbed Carol’s fleshy bottom and brought her back and forth on her thigh so she could feel everything. The new more intense movement made Carol yell. She held herself on her arms, not as close to Therese as before but she didn’t mind because now she a full view of Carol’s body. Her long blond hair was almost covering her whole upper body, sticking to her sweating skin.

 

Carol rolled her hips a last time and clutched one of Therese’s hands that was still on her bottom, and she tensed. Her whole body stiff, her muscles strained to the maximum. Her mouth was open, her red luscious lips shining with saliva, her breasts shining with sweat, her lower stomach shining with arousal. She came down slowly, her body twitching still.

 

She lay down on the bed near Therese. Carol put two of her fingers in her mouth and went to touch Therese. Her fingers were insistent and restless and Therese whimpered from her soul. Carol’s arm was moving so fast causing her breasts to move too. The sight was incredible and Therese, happier than she had ever been, happy to find her love again, happy to be free, happy to be coated in Carol’s arousal, happy to watch Aphrodite personified giving her pleasure, she jerked up and down in an intense bliss that took her breath away, but not her voice and she cried out Carol’s name.

 

A few minutes had passed and they were kissing languorously, languidly, with too much tongue and saliva. They were tired and sated and happy. That was all they needed: each other.

 

“It is probably not to best moment to tell you but…” Therese stopped to kiss Carol again and to caress her hip, she could not help herself. “But you are officially my sister, Miss Caroline Belivet.”

 

“The papers arrived?” Carol exclaimed. “Oh no you are indeed right. I just fucked my sister!”

 

“Carol!” Therese still had the force to blush even though they had done what they had done.

 

“My name is Caroline now.” Carol said haughtily before breaking into a smile, a genuine, beautiful smile. “It was the only solution for us to live together wasn’t it? That is smart. Two spinster sisters living together. Yes, we can do that.”

 

“And also…” Therese licked her lips, tasting Carol more than herself. “Now you have my last name.”

 

“Oh.” Carol breathed out like that had just occurred to her. She bent down to kiss Therese’s ring finger. “I had promised after all, hadn’t I?”

 

 


End file.
